Mark Bugnaski / GazetteCraft beer-maker Larry Bell stands inside one of the areas of his Bell's Brewery Inc., which is undergoing renovation as part of a multimillion-dollar expansion Bell announced in September.

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Bell won the Brewers Recognition Award from the Brewers Association, was Kalamazoo College’s 2010 Distinguished Achievement Award recipient and was a James Beard Foundation semifinalist for the Outstanding Wine and Spirits Professional Award.

“For me, personally, it was a damn big year,” he said.

Bell said he hopes to break ground on a new $17 million brewhouse in April and have it completed by January 2012.

When completed, the brewhouse will increase fermenting capacity from about 800 barrels a day to a daily maximum of 2,000 barrels. It also will enhance employee care areas and provide new space and equipment to ferment specialty beers.

“When you build a new brewhouse, it is sized much bigger,” Bell said. “You grow into it over a large period of time.”

The remaining $35 million will be spent through 2016 to build and equip an additional 60,000 square feet of floor space at the brewery, 8938 Krum Ave. The entire project is expected to create 50 new jobs.

Bell said he is looking to grow about 15 percent in 2011. While sales of traditional beers have struggled during the tough economy, craft beers have been riding a hot streak, he said.

“Craft beer is the hot segment in the brewing industry,” Bell said. “There is double-digit growth for the whole category. Nationwide, the trend is that people are interested in craft beer.”

This is especially true in Michigan.

“In Michigan, from the numbers I see, all the Michigan craft brewers are doing well this year,” he said. “And I think part of that is people in Michigan know that buying local keeps money in the community and they support that.”

Growth seems to be the norm for Bell’s Brewery, and a still-expanding craft-beer market makes continued growth likely in the future. But the brewery today is a long way from where Bell started 25 years ago, brewing beer in a 15-gallon soup kettle.

Coming from such humble beginnings, Bell said he could not have envisioned such success when he began brewing beer in the mid-1980s.

“I don’t think anybody that was a microbrewery back then would have ever imagined we would come this far,” Bell said. “I think most of us are just trying to stay strapped to the roller-coaster ride and have fun.”